


Hold On To Your Butts

by llenees



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Crack, F/M, Jurassic World AU, Jurassic Zimbits, Lardo is a BAMF, M/M, Mild Blood, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Tyrannojackus Rex, Tyrannosaurus Jack, Velocibitty, ZImbits endgame, dinosaurs eating mammals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 20:24:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6208822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/llenees/pseuds/llenees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>okay, so the T-rex and Blue become unlikely bffs for life at the end of Jurassic World, right? And there’s a big size difference, right? AND ONE EATS MORE PROTEIN, RIGHT?!</p><p>Jurassic Zimbits. I’m just sayin’</p><p>aka llenees' husband left her so she got high and wrote her first fic</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lardo could kick Chris Pratt's ass

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a little high right now (it's been a shitty day) so there are probably a bunch of mistakes. All unbeta'd, so mistakes are my own.

“He’s doing it again, Rans,” Holster said. Next to Holster, Ransom clacked away at his keyboard, probably making a note on a spreadsheet.

 

Across the room, Larissa “Lardo” Duan growled and wiggled a joystick. The view in monitor 3 panned back and forth, but the raptor in view kept hopping back and forth in the way of the camera, obscuring the paddock behind it.

 

“Damn it, Burse, what are you planning?” She murmured.

 

Ransom looked up from his laptop. “It’s not Burse,” he said, “it’s Eric...again. It’s been him, uh...8 out of the last 11 times. Seems to make 83% more vocalizations now that he’s in the B paddock, too.”

 

“Don’t tell Shitty or he’ll be on my ass about adding audio pickups to the cameras again,” Lardo said. She liked working with Shitty--more than liked it--but he was...distractible. He was an  _ idealist,  _ in it for the  _ science _ , and if he had his way, he’d blow their entire budget on interns and fancy cameras and data-recording equipment.  _ Yeah, the better to record our grisly deaths with. _ No; that money would go to park safety, where it belonged.

 

“Don’t tell me what, Lards?” Shitty said, and...aw, shit.

 

“Eric is chirping at the cameras again,” Holster said.

 

“You mean Bittle,” Shitty grinned. “That itty Bitty is going to take over the pack, mark my words.”

 

Lardo laughed. “Please. He’s afraid to fight! No way he’ll get Chowder, Dex, and Burse under his wing. You’re so full of shit, man.”

 

“Whatever, Bosslady,” Shitty scoffed. “Bet you twenty bucks he’s leading the pack inside a month.”

 

“You’re on,” she said, slapping his hand.

  
“You know? I’m thinking we can make an attraction outta this,” Holster said, stroking his chin. Lardo rolled her eyes, threw a cheese puff at his head, and turned her attention back to the velociraptor chirping brightly at the monitors.


	2. VLOG TIME

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bitty's POV, and his first vlog!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for minor gore (animals eatin' animals, yo. It's the way of the wild). Way less gore than JW though. I'll update tags as soon as I post.

Okay, it probably isn’t his best vlog, but Lardo has been working them like mad and he’s barely gotten any time to himself.

“Helllooooo humans!” He chirps at the camera. “I know, it’s been awhile since I’ve vlogged, but as you can see, I’ve been busy, MOVING TO A NEW PADDOCK! That’s right, I’m now in the B paddock!”

He lets out a bright, brilliant scream. Somewhere off to the left, a human yelps in alarm, but he doesn’t let it interrupt his vlogging.

“Oh my goodness, y’all, the paddock is gorgeous. There’s West Indian lilac, and sometimes compys escape their cages and sneak in here and I get to eat ‘em. Morning exercise started, and Short Human is trying to figure out how I fit in here. The frogs are a little in awe of me because I’ve been in the paddocks longer, even though it was C paddock.

“And oh, the frogs, y’all. They are just the sweetest things. There’s Burse, the raptor in charge, and Dex, who gets in fights with Burse all the time.”

Eric shifts right a little to get back in frame (the camera keeps moving whenever he steps in front of it) as he reflects on Burse and Dex squabbling over breakfast that morning. 

***

“Man, this food is pretty sick,” Burse grumbled at the bowl of milk and meat in front of him. He ate messily and never seemed to clean up the bloody shadow on his lower jaw.

Meanwhile, Dex was inspecting the food chute mechanism, his reddish tail swinging back and forth. “There has to be something we can do with this,” he said, carelessly knocking Burse’s food over.

Burse snarled and snapped near Dex’s tail. “Hey, chill,” he grumbled.

***

“And, of course, there’s Chowder. Lord, how that sweet angel beat out Dex for his position, I will never know.”

***

A small (but bigger than Eric) big-eyed raptor with shiny metal teeth replacing several of his fangs hopped excitedly from side to side in front of Eric. “You’ll love Paddock B,” Chowder chirped, “it’s ‘swawesome! Blue went here, and Charlie, and sometimes you can hear--” he was interrupted by a nearby growl and nearly tripped over himself hopping in an excited circle-- “JACK!”

***

“And then, of course, there’s Jack.”

***

It’s Eric’s first day in Paddock B. Short Human had given him a frozen rat for being such a good listener, and he stole away to eat in private. Eric was quietly mixing bits of rat with some herbs growing near the perimeter fence, purring and singing to himself, when he heard a noise off to the side. He stilled suddenly, looking around for the threat.

On the other side of the fence, there stood a tyrannosaurus rex.

He was tall and imposing, with the square jaw and flat head common to all t-rexes, but he had the most remarkable eyes. Eric hadn’t even known that dinosaur eyes could be that blue, and those blue eyes were fixed on Eric and his little rat pie.

The rex--Jack--swallowed the rest of the goat leg he’d been carrying loosely in his mouth and continued to stare at Eric. “You need to eat more protein,” Jack said, before stomping away.

***

“BITCH U DID NOT”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Burse still isn't a typo.
> 
> My dad is coming into town to help me get started on filing separation paperwork, so idk if I'll have time to write more in the next few days, but I have some ideas for at least 3 more chapters.


	3. Bitty feeds a friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lardo looks forward to the weekend, and Eric tries to feed Chowder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some dino-on-rat violence here; don't read it that isn't your thing!
> 
> As always, unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine, and I've been grieving while I write so there may be some incoherence.
> 
> ALSO OMG YOU ALL v01c3dragoart MADE SOME ART INSPIRED BY THE IDEA OF JURASSIC ZIMBITS AND IT'S AMAAAAZING CHECK IT OUT [HERE](http://v01c3dragoart.tumblr.com/post/140878226747/v01c3dragoart-here-is-this-trash-sorry-for-my)
> 
> Their art includes scientifically accurate dinosaurs, which is awesome (my Jurassic Zimbits are not scientifically accurate because Jurassic Park had a profound impact on my childhood, but accurate dinos are AWESOME!)

Chowder is the first to fall.

It’s been seven days since Shitty and Lardo shook on their bet, and Lardo is already planning out what she’s going to do with the money (okay, weed. It was always gonna be weed) because there is no chance Eric is taking over the pack. He performs exceptionally well in agility training. He’s attentive, quick, and smart; he looks almost graceful as he bounds after his prey. He is easily the least aggressive of the bunch, though. Any time Burse, Chowder, or Dex nips at him to get him out of the way, he balks instead of biting back. Once, a pig squealed a little too loudly and Eric ran into a tree so fast he knocked himself out.

Lardo has been keeping a closer eye on Eric anyway, because she’s damn good at her job, and that tiny little raptor is weird. He still vocalizes a lot more often than his packmates, and he still chirps straight into the cameras. Her leading theory is that he’s picking up on some resonance from the cameras that can’t be heard by human ears. She made the mistake of mentioning her thoughts at a staff meeting a few days ago, and Shitty lit up like a damned Christmas tree and has since filed eighteen separate requisition forms for different types of cameras so he can test this theory.

She rejected every one, of course. Sure, she wants to know what’s going on, but she isn’t going to waste precious park resources on a science experiment.

It’s finally Monday, though, and Lardo is looking forward to two days off at the end of her shift. She doesn’t have any exciting plans--pong with the boys at Holster’s, then poker with those stupid suckers who will never learn that they will never beat her--but she’s still humming a little as she enters the raptor control room. The raptors tend to be more active at night, so she gets to the office a little early so she can get a sitrep from Georgia.

“Hey, George,” she says, smiling at her night shift counterpart as she sets down her bag and heads over, “how are the animals today?”

Georgia looks up from her computer and smiles as Lardo approaches. Georgia’s hair is up in a messy bun this morning, and her angular chin has a spot of hot sauce on it, probably from her mid-shift “lunch.”

“Morning, Larissa,” she says, and Lardo and Georgia pound it. “Not a lot to report. The kids were a little sleepier than usual. Burse and Dex fought a little around 3; no damage, though. It looks like Chowder and Eric are stalking some rats over by the north edge of the paddock. It’s probably a good day for training.”

Lardo didn’t take the raptors through exercises every day. They needed to be sharp and excited for any of it to sink in. If they got bored during training, they would get snappy and vicious. Lardo typically spent her morning assessing the raptors’ moods and deciding which exercises, if any, they would do that afternoon.

Georgia yawns hugely and smiles. “Okay, time to bounce. Have a good weekend, Lards. See you Thursday.”

Lardo nods companionably at Georgia and then moves towards the espresso machine in the kitchenette. Over the whir of the churning of the grinding beans, she hears Holster and Ransom stumbling into the raptor control room and getting situated.

Halfway through her first cup of coffee, Ransom and Holster start placing bets on who gets the rat, Eric or Chowder. Apparently, the raptors are herding the rat along instead of actually pouncing, and it’s anyone’s guess which raptor will get sick of the game first and go in for the kill. She looks up from the exercise spreadsheets she’s been leafing through just in time to see a quick flurry of movement on the monitors.

“What happened?” She asks curiously.

“Something spooked them,” Holster says, and starts flipping through different views on the secondary display, looking for the source of the raptors’ clear agitation. “Let me look--ah! There it is.” 

The secondary display, which had previously shown a rapidly-changing grid of nine different cameras throughout the park, shifted to a single large display of the neighboring T-rex paddock. Jack, the big rex, is standing near the fence between their paddocks. The rat is running in terrified circles, caught between the three dinosaurs, and Jack is pressing his head close to the fence and eyeing the rat hungrily.

Jack could hold his own in a fight against the raptors and he knows it--not that he’ll get the chance through the electric fence. Chowder knows it, too; he’s clearly agitated, shifting back and forth on his wide haunches and eyeing Jack warily. They still don’t have audio on the security cameras, but Lardo can imagine Chowder’s nervous chirruping. He’s clearly torn between his fear of Jack and his hunger for the tasty rat he’s been chasing for the better part of an hour.

Jack opens his jaw, and in the control room, Ransom jumps a little at the muffled sound of the rex’s roar coming from the north. On screen, Chowder takes off like a shot towards the West fence, and Lardo expects Eric to follow him. Eric is fourth in line among the raptors, after all; he wouldn’t fare well alone against a bigger predator in the wild, and the instinct to flee must be strong despite his safety here in captivity.

Instead of running away, though, Eric lowers his head to the ground in a hiss and prepares to pounce.

“Holy shit,” Holster breathes, “Little bro is gonna get fried.”

Before Eric even jumps, Lardo is on her feet, throwing on her jacket and barking orders to the men around her.

“Get asset containment on the line and tell them we’ve got a 3-40,” she says. “Call the med office; tell him we need non-emergency assistance on a 3--” but before she can finish, Eric jumps. She braces herself for the loud, ugly crack of electricity as she watches one of her animals get electrocuted (the fences aren’t fatal to the raptors, but they’re never pleasant).

The crack never comes.

“What the hell?” Ransom says. “Hols--”

But Holster is already rewinding the feed on the secondary monitor and playing it back in slow motion.

It takes them four re-watches to see what happened. Jack roars. Chowder runs. Eric hisses. That they’d all seen. What they hadn’t seen was the rat.

The rat had been looking for an escape from the perilous situation it found itself in. Jack’s roar had sent it rushing away from the fence, but it stopped when Chowder leapt over it in his haste to escape. When Eric hissed, the humans had assumed that he was hissing at Jack; instead, he seemed to be hissing at the rat, sending it fleeing back towards the fence again. Eric leapt in the air to pounce on the rat, landing bare inches away from the fence and then running off with his prize.

“You get it, ya lil fucker,” says Shitty--and holy shit, Lardo hadn’t even noticed when he entered the room. She was too focused on the events at hand. “Where’d he take the rat?”

Holster hums and flips through the monitors again, eventually settling on Eric jumping a log and landing next to Chowder. They were in the southwest corner of the paddock, in a small clearing a few yards away from the nearest fence.

“Maybe he’s gonna eat it in front of Chowder, show that motherfucker who’s boss,” muses Shitty.

Lardo thinks that seems unlikely, but she doesn’t say anything, still standing with one arm through her jacket and her eyes glued to the monitor.

Chowder startles a little as Eric draws near, not quite trusting the other dinosaur. When Eric lowers his head to the ground, Chowder bares his teeth and steps back, but then Eric opens his mouth… and the rat falls out.

“What the hell,” says Ransom.

Eric steps back, away from the food he’d risked life and limb for, and chirps something at Chowder. Chowder stares at him for a second, and then tears into the rat with gusto.

“I...I don’t think I have a column for this,” Ransom frowns, staring at his spreadsheets contemplatively. “What do we call this behavior? Hunting? Sharing?” Lardo walks over behind him and looks at his computer screen full of meticulously collected data.

“Alternative paths to dominance,” Shitty says. “At least, that’s what I’m going to call it in my paper.”

Lardo glances back at the monitor before she meets Shitty’s eyes--and then she stares back at the screen in shock.

“What the fuck,” she whispers.

Chowder is ducking his neck under Eric’s chin in a clear sign of submission. With his head lower than Eric’s, he’s making himself vulnerable and acknowledging Eric as a superior in the pack.

Holy shit, I might not get that twenty dollars, Lardo thinks to herself. What. The. Fuck.

It’s normal protocol not to re-assign raptor designations until they’ve been in formation for at least two weeks, but Lardo still catches Holster calling Eric “Bittle” twice. She makes him prep the frozen rats as punishment each time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of ideas for future chapters, including: Mama Bittle! Johnson appears! also, INDOMINOUS KENT!
> 
> I'm llenees on tumblr--come follow if you feel like it! Also, thank you all for kudos and comments--they're definitely what keeps me writing.


	4. BITTY MAKES A PIE!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2nd Vlog! 1st exercise! Bitty makes a pie! Shitty uses the bathroom!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, unbeta'd, written while high, blame (legal) drugs for all contained wackiness.
> 
> There's some violence committed against a pig in this chapter, plus eating of a pig. More details at the end, in case you're concerned about this content.

“Hey, y’all!” Eric chirps cheerfully, “I hope you haven’t missed me too much! We’ve had a lot of early practices this week, so I haven’t had much time for the vlog lately. I got to try a new recipe, though, and...wait for it...I GOT AN ASSIST ON MY FIRST PIG! Let me tell you, it was amazing…”

***

Pigpigpigpigpig.

Eric is a southern paddock gentleman, okay? He knows when to wait. He knows when to share. He always eats rats with the claws on the left and goat with the claws on the right. It isn’t like him to lose his manners, but when they play the pig game, something gets in him and he isn’t the timid, self-conscious country dinosaur anymore. Instead, he’s fast, spinning in midair to follow his prey and hitting the ground with soft claws.

Short Human snaps at him, and it’s enough to make him pause and look at her. Short Human is not like the others; she’s quiet. When she makes one of her unintelligible squeals and clicks her soft, fleshy claws, it pays to take notice.

Eric still hopes that someday, he’ll be able to teach Short Human actual words. She is clearly the only one of the humans who is smart enough to learn. Some of them, like Pungent Human, prattle on incessantly without actually saying anything, belching out syllables like cmmmmmmeonnnn and swwwwwsmmmme.

Once Eric meets Short Human’s eyes at her perch on the walkway over their paddock, she makes a clicking sound that feels almost as rewarding as a nice juicy rat, and Eric takes off again after the pigpigpigpigpig.

It takes only seconds for Chowder to fall into line beside Eric. Chowder knocks his jaw into Eric’s side affectionately and then spreads out a few meters to the right, cutting off the pig’s desperate jerk in that direction. Eric snarls in joy at the successful route, and Chowder raises his voice along with Eric.

The exercise goes on for another full minute, but the pig’s fate was decided then and there. With Chowder on the right, Eric in the middle, and Burse and Dex on the left flank, the pig has nowhere to go but forward...straight into the corner of the paddock, with nowhere to go.

Eric is preparing for a leap, ready to open up the pig, before Short Human shocks him into immobility.

“EJACULATION,” she shrieks.

He looks up at where she stands on the fence and sees that two of the claws of one arm are between her pursed lips while the other arm is curled in the gesture that means stop.

Eric sidles from haunch to haunch while Chowder stops so abruptly, he careens into the ground. Next to Eric, Dex and Burse quickly halt as well and sway forward a little from the momentum.

Eric can tell that Dex is agitated, and that Burse has been quietly feeding off of that agitation.

“Chill,” Burse hisses at Dex.

“Don’t tell me to chill,” Dex snaps back. “I want it. I want it I want it, want the pigpigpigpig...you get pig all the time. You don’t know what it’s like.”

“You don’t get this one; it’s mine,” Burse snaps, and he begins to step towards the pig again with a sneer.

“BUTTRESS,” Short Human snaps.

Dex snaps at Burse’s neck and Short Human yells “DERRIERE.”

“Don’t be selfish, Burse. I want some!”

“No!”

Chowder, finally righted from his earlier collapse, whines uncomfortably. “Come on, guys, just get along.”

“Only if he chills,” Burse barks, “and accepts my authority.”

“BUTTBREATH.”

“Your authority? What did you do to earn that authority? Nothing! You were just given it, while I worked my way up the ranks.”

“DANDELION.”

“And here’s another thing, you think you’re so chill but everyone knows you aren’t really that relaxed, you just keep eating the wrong plants and it knocks you out! No one is that chill, it isn’t natural, it--”

Ccccrack!

There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then..

“ENLIGHTENED EFFERVESCENCE,” Short Human shrieks disappointedly as the raptors turn towards the source of the sound.

While the three had argued amongst themselves, Eric finally got tired of waiting and sliced the pig’s neck open neatly himself, giving it a quick, painless death. He begins to tear it up efficiently into smaller portions.

“I’ll take that,” Burse begins, moving forward.

“No,” Eric says simply. His tone of voice brooks no room for argument.

“So…” Dex starts hopefully, but

“No,” Eric says again.

“Yeah, no,” Chowder adds, but he licks his jowl hungrily and eyes the pig bits.

Eric smiles up at him. “Your time will come, Chowder. I just need to finish it up first. It’s better this way, trust me.”

Normally, they would fight him on this--Dex especially--but the smell of the pig and whatever plants Eric is mixing in is intoxicating. None of them have ever seen anything like this before.

In mere minutes, Eric has made a huge mud pie full of pig meat and some plants scavenged around.

“Is it time?” Chowder asks hopefully as Eric slices the mud pie into neat quarters.

“It’s time,” Eric says, nudging a pie slice over to Chowder. The next slice goes to Dex, then Burse, and finally Eric tucks into a slice himself. It’s fucking delicious.

***

Back in the men’s restroom next to the raptor control room, Shitty smacks a flat palm on the shiny metal soap dispenser. Nothing comes out.

“Come on, you blue-balled cocksucking motherfucker,” he groans. “Come on, baby, just a little squirt…”

A thin slime of watery white soap bubbles squelches out, and for a second, Shitty wonders if anyone would really be cruel enough to jizz in the soap reservoir. Hopes not, but you can never be too careful. He sniffs his hand and then warily touches the tip of his tongue to the little pool of liquid.

“Aw, fuck,” he yells, spitting. He hates the taste of soap.

Two minutes later, he walks into the control room with a wadded up ball of paper towel. Lardo and Holster are back from their exercise, and all three of them--Lardo, Holster, and Ransom--are standing attentive in front of the monitors, watching a few seconds of the feed on a loop.

“What the fuck, eggheads, you couldn’t wait for me?”

He chucks the paper towel at Ransom’s head (biggest nerd in the bunch) and it bounces off of his shiny, shiny head and lands on Holster’s shoulder, but Holster makes no move to brush it off.

“What’s wrong? What did I--”

But then, he sees what’s happening on the feed loop, and he stops to stare with them.

The feed cycles three more times before anyone moves. Lardo takes a crisp $20 bill from her pocket and slaps it into Shitty’s chest before leaving the room without a word.

“What the ever-loving fuck,” Shitty says once, and then again, softly. “What the ever-loving fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> iiiii...don't know how to write warning end notes, PLUS I'm high, so, I'm really really super sorry if you need more/different! Please let me know if you know how to improve this.
> 
> Bitty snaps the pig's neck, so it dies quickly and painlessly, but then he rips it up and makes a pie with it. In this universe, the pig wasn't scared beforehand, it was playing a fun game. Also in this universe, pig mud pie is delicious and not disgusting or improbable. It's a nice universe.
> 
> I'm llenees on tumblr if you want to come say hi! I thiiink the next chapter will be a flashback involving Mama Bittle, but I might push that to a little later.
> 
> Thank you again for your kudos and your comments! You're all awesome people.


	5. Interlude: Raptor babies!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raptors imprint on Lardo after they're hatched: an interlude
> 
> I've been waiting for this one for a long time, y'all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All mistakes are still mine :) I know basically nothing about animals that aren't dogs or cats, and I'm too lazy to look things up :)
> 
> I finally asked for a divorce, so I decided to write this chapter as a bit of an interlude, because I've been looking forward to it for ages.

Out of all of Lardo’s duties as Dino-Wrangler, Boss of Assholes, Queen Miss Badass Alpha of the Raptors (forever may she reign)--Shitty’s words, and he had a medal etched for her--hanging out for hatching is her least favorite. She’s supposed to be there first thing when they’re born. The doc is hoping they’ll imprint on her like baby ducklings, but these aren’t ducklings, they’re dinosaurs. No one knows what they’re doing; they’re just holding their dicks, hoping something good will come out. Movies make it seem like dino hatching is exciting, but really it’s tedious as hell.

First off, she has to be nearby at all times close to the hatching, just in case one of the little fuckers decides to pop early. She spends the days--sometimes weeks--up until they finish hatching in a weird little mix between a studio apartment and a lab so she can be available at a moment’s notice. One time, she was taking a dump when one of the damned raptors decided it was time, and an ecstatic lab tech had to hold an Easter basket full of thermo-material (read: styrofoam packing peanuts) around a privacy screen so Lardo shitting was the first thing the little fucker would ever see (the lab tech later introduced himself as Dr. Knight). She gets no privacy for anywhere from a few hours to a month, and it sucks.

Secondly, the doctors are terrible at predicting when the babies will hatch. Some combination of the thickness of the shell and the viscosity of the fluid inside makes it incredibly difficult to tell what’s going on in there. They estimate based on average gestation times, but sometimes they still fuck it up.

Third, it can take them a long-ass time to actually open up their damned shells, and you can’t help them or it fucks with their growth, so she has to hang out, trying to make eye contact with the little exposed bits of skin that poke out of the rustling shells until she can finally meet its eyes and they fall in dino-love or what-the-fuck-ever.

The point is, hatching duty sucks, and if it doesn’t make a difference, she’s going to be pissed. This particular batch sucked worse than any others, because five started hatching at the same time and they ended up sending all of the scientists and--for lack of a better term--nursemaids out of the room because they couldn’t be sure that none of them would accidentally get imprinted on by accident. Then, it took eight hours for them all to break out far enough that she felt comfortable calling everyone back in. After that were two more whirlwind hours of weighing the baby raptors, feeding them goat’s milk, and gently wiping them down with bizarre cloths meant to emulate an adult raptor’s tongue (all the scientist are fucking crazy). Then, the raptors--and with them, the lab assistants--were whisked off to the creche and Lardo was left mostly alone.

Lardo is tired, okay? Her back hurts. Her eyes are watering. She smells like raptor birthing fluid, and while the raptors are still babies and don’t yet have that distinctive rank carnivore smell, they aren’t exactly minty fresh. She is ready to go back to her bungalow and pass out for a few hours.

Shitty claps her on the back. “Good job, Lards,” he says. “You’re almost done.”

She looks up at him irately. “Only almost?” She says.

“Yeah. We’ve got one more. It’s little, though--everyone says it’s probably a dud, but the doc wants you to wait around a few more hours just to be sure.”

Shitty slings a thumb back to point at one sad little egg that’s completely still on the “nest” (read: really bad middle school diorama) that takes up the center of the room. It’s not the smallest egg Lardo has ever seen, but she’s never seen a healthy animal come out of something that little. “Poor lil fucker,” Shitty whispers. “At least you’re advancing science there, bro.”

Lardo isn’t feeling nearly so charitable.

“I want a fucking nap,” she groans, and she’s horrified to suddenly feel tears welling up in her eyes. She must be more tired than she thought.

“Whoa there, Bosslady,” Shitty says, and Lardo is too tired to tell if that’s compassion or panic coloring his eyes. “Why don’t you take a shower and I’ll keep an eye out.”

Embarrassment is for punks and grad students, Lardo decides as she pulls off her shirt on her way to the shower stall in the corner (modesty is for punks and grad students, too). She slides back the privacy screen and steps behind it, turning on the water only to discover--”I’m out of soap,” she calls.

“Uh--” Lardo hears the sounds of cabinets and drawers opening and closing as Shitty frantically looks around for something else to give her. “All I’ve got is dish soap.”

“I don’t give a fuck--just give it to me.” She can practically feel Shitty’s incredulous stare from the shower as she waves her hand around the side of the privacy screen for the soap. Bro might walk and talk like he just came from a frat, but she knows how much he paid to have fancy shampoos and conditioners imported from the mainland.

The dish soap finally hits her hand, courtesy of Shitty, and she hums a tired little tune as she steps into the open shower stall (no curtains or doors to keep her from the baby raptors) and begins to wash herself all over. She doesn’t miss grad school. Lardo always knew that she lived for field work, but she always thought that would mean digging through a pile of zebra shit in South Africa or observing the behavior of monitor lizards in Indonesia, not living in a lab for a month so she could play mommy drill sergeant to extinct animals.

It wasn’t until the water ran cold that she realizes she finished washing some time ago and is just standing under the water in a daze. She slaps the water off and reaches for a towel that isn’t there. Belatedly, she remembers grabbing it to wipe up some goo around the time the third egg really cracked.

“Fuck,” she whispers to herself, and then she turns her shirt from earlier inside-out and uses it to dry herself off.

When she steps out of the shower, there’s a large men’s undershirt hanging over the privacy screen. It’s the cleanest thing she’s seen in days, and she’s too grateful for its existence to wonder about its provenance. It’s still a little warm, and she’s grateful for that, too.

She’s just finished tugging on her underwear under the shirt/dress (she’s tiny, but she makes up for it in fierceness) when Shitty opens the screen. He herds her gently to the couch that doubles as her bed, where he has Parks and Rec queued up on Netflix, ready to go. She doesn’t even have to press play--he does it for her while she crushes herself into her pillow, surrounded by softness and a warm, musky smell.

Over Leslie Knope’s overly enthusiastic banter, she hears Shitty quietly open the main door and tell someone yes, you can come in, thank you for waiting, we don’t need a vacuum, fresh linens would be great. The soft sounds of a radio and pop music float in; Lardo quickly tunes it out.

A little while later, she feels the other side of the couch shift, but her eyes are already closed.

Sometime after that, she’s briefly started by a soft snore, but she kicks her legs out to tangle them with his and drifts back to sleep.

A little while later, nothing.

***

“Oh dear.” A soft, feminine voice.

Lardo wakes briefly, but then drifts off again, only for--

“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.” The voice again.

Something squeaks, but it might just be Shitty snoring on the other side of the couch. He’s clearly stuffed up; man needs some Breathe Right strips.

There are some more chirps and thumps and noises, but Larod has been living in the hatching room for weeks and living next to Shitty and Ransom and Holster for years; she knows how to tune out suspicious noises when she’s safe. Shitty rolls over with a loud snnnnerk; Lardo throws an arm over her eyes and drifts off again before she properly wakes up.

***

“Pardon me, ma’am?” A kind voice, accompanied by a gentle shake, startles Lardo enough that she sits straight up.

“Whazzat?!” Shitty yells and falls off the couch in a tangle of blankets.

“I’m so sorry to wake you,” the voice says, “but I think he’s hungry.”

A short, blonde woman in a Jurassic World staff polo is standing in front of the couch. Her brown shirt brings out her kind brown eyes, and her name tag says “Suzanne.”

Perched gently on her shoulder, cooing in her ear, is a baby raptor, fully hatched.

***

“I don’t understand,” Suzanne Bittle says, “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

“Lady, you picked up a raptor,” Hoskins sneers, shaking his finger in her face. “Of course you did something wrong.”

If Suzanne is intimidated, she doesn’t show it. “I didn’t pick him up, he jumped on me! He looked so sad and alone, stuck on that big table. I just wanted to help.”

Hoskins snorts. “Help yourself to some money.”

“Mr. Hoskins!” Masrani shouts from the video screen, “I think that is quite enough. Please keep yourself in check for our meeting here tonight.”

They make an odd little party in the doc’s office at the lab: two women, three men, a dude skyped in on a laptop (Jurassic World was such a fucking sausage fest) and a baby raptor. Lardo is still dressed in just a long t-shirt and underwear. Shitty is wearing a too-small JW hoodie that wouldn’t quite zip up to cover his chest (it turns out the t-shirt was his, and it was his only t-shirt). Hoskins is in a PJ set like an old man, and Masrani is wearing a henley but Lardo strongly suspects that he forgot to put on pants before he hopped on Skype. Weirdly enough, the doc is in slacks, a polo, and a lab coat, as if he had expected to be called to an emergency meeting in the middle of the night.

Lardo holds the baby raptor in her closed hands, attempting to calm him down while he tries his best to run back over to Mrs. Bittle.

Suzanne finally noticed the raptor’s struggles. “Don’t hold him like that, dear, Dicky doesn’t like it,” she says. “Try this.”

She reaches over the conference table to try to correct Lardo, and Hoskins shouts “Hey” at the same time Shitty snorts “Dicky?!”

“Dicky,” she nods primly. “He didn’t have a name, so I named him Richard, but he’s just a little thing and Dicky fits him better, don’t you think? Now, can I show you the right way to hold him?”

“This works better for samples,” Lardo says.

“Yes, but you’re scaring the poor dear,” Suzanne replies.

Lardo knows everything that scientists and researches have ever come to learn about velociraptors. She is an expert. They don’t make just anyone the head of an experimental raptor research and training mission, after all. On the other hand, she has only ever interacted with these animals in controlled circumstances. They have been held by machines, by veterinarians, by researchers, and by handlers. They have never, in all the years since they were brought back from extinction, been held by someone who just wanted to love them. Maybe Suzanne has a point.

Lardo glances up at Masrani--she doesn’t like asking for permission, but she’s in a room with the owner of Jurassic World, the head of InGen, and the scientist who actually resurrected dinosaurs; she’ll do things by the book.

At Masrani’s nod, Lardo gently hands the raptor--Dicky, ha--over to Suzanne, who cups Dicky gently and then strokes his head gently. The raptor immediately calms and makes a purring little chirrup. This time, when she passes Dicky back over to Lardo, Dicky doesn’t try to get away.

“Ah!” Masrani claps his hands delightedly on the screen. “That is wonderful. Look at my animal; he seems so happy. So. What are we to do about this?”

Hoskins begins to talk, but Masrani holds up a hand to forestall him. “We have already heard what Mr. Hoskins has to say: he wants Mrs. Bittle fired and the animal destroyed. What about the handlers?”

Lardo and Shitty have a deal in these situations: he tries not to fuck things up, and she does all the talking because if he opens his mouth he will absolutely fuck things up. He has a knack for riling up authority figures--part of the reason he was moved around the part so much until he found a place under Lardo. She weighs her words carefully.

“This is the first raptor that hasn’t imprinted on me, but raptor imprinting isn’t well studied. We don’t know what will change.” Imprinting, by itself, was well understood by scientists, of course. The Jurassic World scientists firmly believed that raptors imprinted exclusively and closely on their handlers, but privately, Lardo wasn’t so sure. Who was to say how much of her bond with the animals was due to imprinting and not just because she spent the most time with them?

“We have always had our raptors imprint on their handlers,” Masrani says, troubled.

“We don’t know what will change.” Lardo reiterates.

“Very well. What do you think, Dr. Johnson?”

The doc clears his throat. “This was all meant to happen. This differentiation will provide some narrative structure for the exceptional behavior demonstrated by this raptor, and it can provide some nice throwbacks to the comics in other forms--musical cues, for example. Mrs. Bittle has always been a favorite.” Whatever the hell that meant.

Johnson. Weirdest of the weird.

For a moment, all that Masrani does is say “I see,” in a way that clearly meant he didn’t. He strokes his temple and then sighs. “Well, it is late. I don’t believe that Suzanne Bittle has done any harm, and I am not going to waste my investment in this animal until there is a compelling reason to do so. We will proceed as if this never occurred, but Mrs. Bittle, please do try not to pick up any of my animals again. I would hate to have to fire you.”

With that, Masrani ends the call. Hoskins snorts and stomps off, and Johnson mutters something about leaving for “plot reasons” and goes off to wherever it is weird scientists go on their downtime--probably into a pod to recharge batteries. Dicky nibbles on Lardo’s finger gently, and she starts when she realizes that this means she can go home to her bungalow.

She offers Dicky to Shitty. “Mind taking him to the science geeks so I can go home and sleep?” She says.

“No prob,” Shitty smiles, looking first at Lardo and then at Mrs. Bittle--Mrs. Bittle, who is looking a little wistful as they prepare to take the raptor away.

“He likes Beyoncé,” she says suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Beyoncé. On the radio. And he liked Nicki Minaj, too. You should play that for him.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Shitty says gently, but he and Lardo share a guilty look. The raptor is an animal, bred for research. He isn’t a child or a beloved pet, and while they’ll keep him mentally stimulated with toys and a pack, they won’t play his favorite songs.

“He can keep your name, though,” Shitty says suddenly.

“He can?” Lardo and Suzanne say at the same time, though Suzanne says it hopefully while Lardo says it with reproach.

“He can,” Shitty says, staring at Lardo in challenge. “Not Dicky, of course, because we have to pick names that we can translate into codes when he grows older, but we can call him Rick. Then, he can be Berrick or Derek or Eric, depending on where he ends up in his pack.”

“Or Carrick,” Lardo quips with an arched eyebrow.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Shitty says.

“Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Knight!” Suzanne effuses, throwing her arms around him.

Lardo yawns hugely and nods a goodbye at her companions as she heads towards the direction of her bungalow, her mattress, and sleep. Behind her, the rest of their conversation trails off.

“Nah, Dr. Knight is my father. Call me Shitty.”

“Uh, I mean, thank you, Mr, Shi--uh, Mr. Crappy. You are too sweet. Can I bring you something? Do you like pie?”

Humming to herself, Lardo smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YAY I have been waiting for these appearances for aaaaages!!!
> 
> The dish soap thing is a reference to something Sarah Harding does in the book The Lost World. I still hope that I get to be Book!Sarah Harding when I grow up, so I put a little bit of her in Lardo.
> 
> I've been crying a lot lately, so I wanted to cry a little too, because she's a badass and she wouldn't feel bad about it.
> 
> If you haven't seen Jurassic World, just imagine that Masrani and Hoskins are LAX bros.
> 
> I think that's it! Probably I should introduce some plot at some point, so I'm thinking that Indominus Kent might be next.


	6. Is that a fucking shark?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is that a fucking shark?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, sorry about the really long hiatus. My life has gotten...really, significantly, excessively worse than when last we spoke. Things are pretty terrible and I don't know if/when I'll ever finish this. But thank you all for the kind words; they're why this was written and posted!
> 
> Also I know that Shitty should be doing something lawyer-y, but instead he's a science bro who is in it for the animals and the knowledge and who smokes a lot of weed to get over the fact that his pure science baby was fathered by InGen, evil corporate bag of dicks.
> 
> also also once again my life is teh suck and I'm writing intoxicated, so it may or may not be good :)

The first time was an accident.

Ransom was going over the daily report, probably--Shitty wasn't really paying attention, but Holster was giving mad stats face, so they were probably talking about stats. ("Stats face", for the uninitiated, is the weird combination proud/aroused expression Holster got whenever his best bro talked about his dirty little mistress, spreadsheets). Anyway, Ransom was talking about something that wasn't in Shitty's department, so Shitty was zoning out and staring at the monitors behind him. 

The pens around the park were liberally covered in cameras. InGen closely guarded their proprietary genetic information, of course, but behavioral studies (Shitty's specialty) required the ability to, well, study behavior. There were cameras covering most of the pen from a number of angles. An InGen PR team regularly combed through videos and reports to look for clips of the dinosaurs doing something cute or funny; these videos were strategically released to drum up interest in exhibits or to distract from a PR snafu. Four main cameras suspended over the pens offered a complete, if not very detailed, view of the paddock. These views took up the main screens in the room.

Shitty could see that the raptors were squabbling over something in the dirt. It was probably one of the industrial-strength toys that littered the pen. Very occasionally, some small creature would be stupid enough to fall into the pen; when that happened, new beta Bitty would cut it into shares, do something with it (the cameras hadn't yet been able to catch what but Shitty speculated he might be scent-marking the food somehow), and then pass it out. Things were a little rowdier than usual, but Shitty wasn't too concerned, until one of the raptors (Chowder?) jumped out of the pile of raptors and tore off with--

"Is that a fucking shark?"

Lardo turned to him and gave him a death glare for interrupting Ransom mid-sentence, but Shitty was too transfixed to notice, so she too looked at the monitors and then blinked. "Is that a fucking shark?" she said.

Ransom slid over to his console and tapped at a few keys. The images on the monitor suddenly changed as Ransom flipped through different camera views, following Chowder as he ran through the paddock at top speed with his packmates right on his heels. Holster stared at the video and adjusted his glasses. "That appears to be a fucking shark, Bosslady."

"Well, where the hell did he get a fucking shark?"

It wasn't actually a fucking shark, of course. It was a cheap stuffed animal, the kind you'd win at a carnival game. "Must've been the fucking comps," Shitty mused. The damned compsognathus were always breaking out of their paddock, getting places they shouldn't. They were scavengers, they played in the trees, and sometimes, they dropped what they were carrying into the pens below.

"Well, it'll be dead soon. What're your bets, gentlemen?" Lardo asked.

"I'm thinking it'll be Nursey. He loves tearing stuffed animals to shreds," Shitty said, fishing a crumpled twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and slapping it on the table.

Holster sighed. "Not with this shit Nursey shit again, bro," and Shitty could see that this was going somewhere with another chart (or, knowing Holster, a spreadsheet), so he cut him off.

"I know the rule, man. I'm just saying, Bittle kicked his ass so hard he might as well have dropped down to November status."

Holster was clearly about to object, when Ransom put a hand on his shoulder. "Let it go, bro," Ransom said. "You may be technically right, but you can't stand against the march of progress."

"Bro," Holster said, betrayed.

"Bro." Ransom agreed, gently but firmly.

"I like Chowder for it," Lardo said, breaking the tension by putting her twenty on top of Shitty's. "I can't believe he's kept it this long."

It's true; the chase was going on remarkably long. Typically, this kind of chase was just more of the play, and it ended quickly. Chowder was still going strong, though, while his companions started to lag.

Bitty was the first to drop back. Chowder ran too close to the tyrannosaurus pen, and Bitty stopped to chirp at the cameras and possibly over at Jack--they couldn't quite tell if he was out from their camera angle. Next was Dex, who passed another toy during the chase and apparently decided that a toy he could get was better than one he couldn't. Last was Nursey, who suddenly ran to a favorite sunning spot, flopped down, and stared around coolly as if to say "this is what I wanted all along. Shark? What shark?"

Shitty groaned as Lardo pocketed the cash. "Now, he feasts!" she cackled, and the four of them leaned in to watch some fluffy stuffy carnage...

...carnage that, for some reason, didn't come.

"What the fuck?" Shitty said, when Chowder very gently put the shark on the edge of the nesting area he typically claimed for himself. They could see Chowder cooing and chirping at it. A few moments later, Nursey casually sauntered over and just as casually stretched out his jaw to take the shark.

Chowder roared loudly enough that they could hear it in the command center. He snapped his jaws at Nursey. Nursey slunk away.

"What the fuck?" Shitty said again.

"I guess he has a shark now," Holster mused.

***

A week later, there was another one.

"Is that a fucking shark?" Ransom said.

"Yeah, Chowder's got a pet shark, bro, remember?" Holster said.

"No, look," said Ransom, "there's another one."

Sure enough, there was another shark toy in Chowder's pallet. While was about the right size to be hugged by a toddler, this one was about the size of that toddler itself.

"How the fuck did the compys carry that up?" Shitty mused.

"Ransom?" Lardo asked.

"On it, Bosslady," Ransom replied, tapping away at his computer and staring at his personal monitor. "Okay, I'm looking through the archived footage from last night aaand--huh. There it is." He tapped some more, and a video clip popped up onto the main display.

He hit play, and they watched a large toy shark fall through the camera's viewpoint. "We can't actually see the origin point, can you get a better angle?" Lardo asked.

"I can try, but I think this is the best we've got."

***

It was the best angle for the shark bobblehead and the shark beanie baby, too. He found a slightly better angle for the shark t-shirt, but by that point everyone was too agitated to care.

"Where the fuck are they coming from?" Shitty asked.

Lardo glanced at the corner, where Holster was rocking himself and muttering "it's statistically improbable, it's statistically improbable" over and over again while Ransom wrapped him in a blanket. She glanced at Shitty grimly.

"I don't know," she said, "but we aren't getting anywhere like this. I think you know what we need to do."

Shitty paled. "No," he said. "God, no."

Lardo set her jaw with determination. "We have to go into the park."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbqh I can't remember which dinosaur escaped and ran in the trees in Jurassic Park. It's clearly been too long since I read it. So I went with compys, because compys are dicks
> 
> Next up: Shitty and Lardo brave the dangers of a theme park! (okay it's next chronologically but may or may not be next in order, I've also got a lot of Bitty and Jack and Kent stuff in my back pocket)


End file.
